1717 – A sermon on “The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ” by Benjamin Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor, provoked the Bangorian Controversy.

1774 – American Revolutionary War: The Kingdom of Great Britain orders the port of Boston, Massachusetts closed in the Boston Port Act.

1822 – The massacre of the population of the Greek island of Chios by soldiers of the Ottoman Empire following a rebellion attempt, depicted by the French artist Eugène Delacroix.

1854 – Commodore Matthew Perry signs the Treaty of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade.

1866 – The Spanish Navy bombs the harbour of Valparaíso, Chile.

1877 – The family with samurai antecedents who responded to the Saigo army in Oita Nakatsu rebels.

1885 – The United Kingdom establishes a protectorate over Bechuanaland.

1889 – The Eiffel Tower is inaugurated.

1906 – The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (later National Collegiate Athletic Association) is established to set rules for amateur sports in the United States.

1909 – Serbia accepts Austrian control over Bosnia-Herzegovina.

1917 – The United States takes possession of the Danish West Indies after paying $25 million to Denmark, and renames the territory the U.S. Virgin Islands.

1918 – Daylight saving time goes into effect in the United States for the first time.

1930 – The Motion Pictures Production Code is instituted, imposing strict guidelines on the treatment of sex, crime, religion and violence in motion pictures for the next thirty eight years.

1931 – An earthquake destroys Managua, Nicaragua, killing 2,000.

1933 – The Civilian Conservation Corps is established with the mission to relieve rampant unemployment.

1942 – In World War II, Japanese forces invade Christmas Island, then a British possession.

1942 – Holocaust in Ivano-Frankivsk (then called Stanislawow), western Ukraine. German Gestapo organize the first deportation of 5.000 Jews from Stanislawow ghetto to Belzec death camp. It was one of the biggest transports to Belzec in the first phase of the camp.

1944 – Japanese Navy Marshal Mineichi Koga dies in the performance of job in the Navy Second Incident.

1946 – The first election is held in Greece after World War II.

1949 – The Dominion of Newfoundland joins Confederation and becomes the 10th Province of Canada.

1951 – The first commercial US made computer, UNIVAC I, was delivered to the United States Census Bureau.

1957 – Elections to the Territorial Assembly of the French colony Upper Volta. After the elections PDU and MDV form a government.

1959 – The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, crosses the border into India and is granted political asylum.

1964 – The Dictatorship in Brazil, under the aegis of general Castello Branco, begins.

1991 – Georgian independence referendum: nearly 99 per cent of the voters support the country’s independence from the Soviet Union.

1992 – USS Missouri (BB-63), the last active US Navy Battleship, is decommissioned in Long Beach, California.

1994 – The journal Nature reports the finding in Ethiopia of the first complete Australopithecus afarensis skull.

1995 – In Corpus Christi, Texas, Latin superstar Selena Quintanilla Perez is shot and killed by Yolanda Saldivar, the president of her own fan club.

1998 – Netscape releases the code base of its browser under an open-source license agreement; the project is given the code name Mozilla and would eventually be spun off into the non-profit Mozilla Foundation.

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1461 – Wars of the Roses: Battle of Towton – Edward of York defeats Queen Margaret to become King Edward IV of England.

1549 – The city of Salvador da Bahia, first capital of Brazil, is founded.

1632 – Treaty of Saint-Germain signed, returning Quebec to French control after the English had seized it in 1629.

1638 – Swedish colonists establish the first settlement in Delaware, called New Sweden.

1792 – King Gustav III of Sweden dies after being shot in the back at a midnight masquerade at Stockholm’s Royal Opera just 13 days earlier. He is succeeded by Gustav IV Adolf.

1799 – New York passes a law aimed at gradually abolishing slavery in the state.

1806 – Construction authorized of the Great National Pike, better known as the Cumberland Road, becoming the first United States federal highway.

1809 – King Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden abdicates after a coup d’état. At the Diet of Porvoo, Finland’s four Estates pledge allegiance to Alexander I of Russia, commencing the secession of the Grand Duchy of Finland from Sweden.

1831 – Great Bosnian uprising: Bosniak rebel against Turkey.

1847 – Mexican-American War: United States forces led by General Winfield Scott take Veracruz after a siege.

1849 – The United Kingdom annexes the Punjab.

1857 – Sepoy Mangal Pandey of the 34th Regiment, Bengal Native Infantry revolts against the British rule in India and inspires a long-drawn War of Independence of 1857 also known as the Sepoy Mutiny.

1865 – American Civil War: Battle of Appomattox Court House begins.

1867 – Queen Victoria gives Royal Assent to the British North America Act which establishes the Dominion of Canada on July 1.

1940 – The exhibition center to host the Thessaloniki International Trade Fair starts being built.

1941 – World War II: Battle of Cape Matapan – In the Mediterranean Sea, British Admiral Andrew Browne Cunningham leads the Royal Navy in the destruction of three major Italian battleships and two destroyers.

1942 – World War II: In occupied France, British naval forces raid the German-occupied port of St. Nazaire.

1979 – In Pennsylvania, a pump in the reactor cooling system fails in the Three Mile Island accident, resulting in the evaporation of some contaminated water causing a nuclear meltdown.

1979 – British Prime Minister James Callaghan, is defeated by one vote in a Motion of No Confidence. This results in Parliament being dissolved in order to make way for a forthcoming General Election.

2005 – The 2005 Sumatran earthquake rocks Indonesia, and at magnitude 8.7 is the second strongest earthquake since 1960.

2006 – At least 1 million union members, students and unemployed take to the streets in France in protest at the government’s proposed First Employment Contract law.

1964 – The Good Friday Earthquake, the most powerful earthquake in U.S. history at a magnitude of 9.2 strikes South Central Alaska, killing 125 people and inflicting massive damage to the city of Anchorage.

1990 – The United States begins broadcasting TV Martí to Cuba in an effort to bridge the information blackout imposed by the Castro regime.

1993 – Jiang Zemin is appointed President of the People’s Republic of China.

1994 – One of the biggest tornado outbreaks in recent memory hits the Southeastern United States. One tornado slams into a church in Piedmont, Alabama during Palm Sunday services killing 20 and injuring 90.

1998 – The Food and Drug Administration approves Viagra for use as a treatment for male impotence, the first pill to be approved for this condition in the United States.

2005 – The Taiwanese government calls on 1 million Taiwanese to demonstrate in Taipei, in opposition to the Anti-Secession Law of the People’s Republic of China. Around 200,000 to 300,000 attend the walk.

2006 – In Scotland, the prohibition of smoking in all substantially enclosed public places comes into force.

2006 – The military junta ruling Myanmar officially named Naypyidaw, a new city in Mandalay Division, as the new capital. Yangon had formerly been the nation’s capital.

March 26 – Birthdays:

1516 – Conrad Gessner, Swiss naturalist (d. 1565)

1554 – Charles of Lorraine, Duke of Mayenne, French military leader (d. 1611)

1903 – Racing Club de Avellaneda, one of the big five of Argentina, was founded.

1908 – Clube Atletico Mineiro, Founded in Belo Horizonte,Brazil.

1911 – In New York City the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire kills 146 garment workers.

1917 – The Georgian Orthodox Church restores its autocephaly abolished by Imperial Russia in 1811.

1918 – The Belarusian People’s Republic was established.

1931 – The Scottsboro Boys are arrested in Alabama and charged with rape.

1939 – Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli becomes Pope Pius XII.

1941 – Kingdom of Yugoslavia joins the Axis powers with the signing of the Tripartite Pact.

1947 – An explosion in a coalmine in Centralia, Illinois kills 111.

1949 – The extensive deportation campaign known as March deportation was conducted in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to force collectivisation by way of terror. The Soviet authorities deported more than 92,000 people from Baltics to remote areas of the Soviet Union.

1996 – An 81-day-long standoff between the anti-government group Montana Freemen and law enforcement near Jordan, Montana, begins.

1996 – The Labour Party is founded in Turkey.

1996 – The EU’s Veterinarian Committee bans the export of British beef and its byproducts as a result of mad cow disease (BSE).

2006 – The Capitol Hill massacre occurs: a gunman kills six people before taking his own life at a party in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood; it is one of the largest crime scenes the city has ever had.

In Christianity, March 25 is typically celebrated as the day of the Annunciation so long as it does not fall on a Sunday or during Holy Week or Easter Week.

Hilaria, day of resurrection of Attis, a Phrygian deity

istoric start of the new year (Lady Day) in England, Wales, Ireland, and the future United States until the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar in 1752. (The year 1751 began on 25 March; the year 1752 began on 1 January.)

As the day falls close to the vernal equinox, similar to the way Christmas falls near the December solstice, both days are regarded as one of the Quarter Days to Christians in the British Isles.